Super Replay History & Round-Up

The first episode of Replay aired on January 27, 2010. We haven't missed a Saturday since then. It didn't take us long to realize we wanted to play some games longer than the typical 20 to 30 minutes allotted to each Replay segment. Game Informer senior associate editor Dan Ryckert pitched me on the idea of playing the entirety of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I scoffed at the idea at first, but he said he knew the game inside and out and would be able to finish in five or six hour-long episodes.

I was hesitant. Balancing the hours that go into creating content for the magazine and website is a tricky thing. Freeing up several people to record a video for an hour, not to mention edit it and get it ready for airing, was a challenge. Dan pressed on with his pitch, and we agreed to record the first episode on the day we shipped a magazine to our printer. That's one of the few days here where there isn't much to write, and most people are busy planning out potential stories for the next issue.

Given the time investment it takes to create a Super Replay episode, I limited Dan to just one guest. He picked Tim Turi for the first episode. After it was recorded, Dan ran into my office (actually running) and said it turned out fantastic. He was ecstatic. I wasn't originally going to sit in on the second episode, but I wanted to see what the experience was like before we devoted another three to four hours to the project. I made a joke in the first episode about being in a good mood for the first time in two years, the amount of time I had been trying to get some kind of video show on Game Informer's website. Replay became that show, and Super Replay became a great extension of it.

Dan came up with the name Super Replay, telling me he would make a logo for it. Little did I know he would just cut the Super off of the Super Mario Kart logo and paste it on top of the Replay logo. It looked horrible, but was also a good fit for the direction we wanted to take Replay in.

His initial pitch was that Super Replay would be reserved for only the greatest games of all time. Huge names like Zelda, Mario, and Resident Evil wouldn't be given justice with a 30-minute standard episode. While we kept to that idea for several installments, our criteria for Super Replay candidates changed when we discovered Overblood during a Replay Roulette segment. We even threw around ideas to brand it differently, with names like Super Deplay and Super S---play, but instead decided to loosen up the restrictions on what Super Replay meant.

Following the recording of the second episode, Dan and I went to Curtis Fung, Game Informer's senior production manager, to create a video intro for the Zelda Super Replay. Dan and I asked Curtis to flash clips of some of the greatest games of all time. When we saw the final product, days prior to release, it featured gameplay from Superman 64, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and other horrible titles. Dan had to go back to Curtis with a USB drive filled with good games.

From that day forward, Super Replay became a staple in Game Informer's yearly video schedule, and is the favorite part of my job now. We joke all the time in Replay episodes that a particular game would make a "great Super Replay," even though it would be impossible to follow through with each of these statements. We genuinely wish we had time to record them all.

Over the last month, I've received numerous letters from viewers asking us to record Super Replays for games like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, and The Punisher. I've also read requests for games we've already done, like Link to the Past, and Resident Evil 2. While we have a hub that hosts every Replay and Super Replay episode ever, picking out the Super Replays can be a time-consuming endeavor.

I hope the list below serves as a handy one-stop guide to our Super Replay show. We'll update it in the future as new games join the Super Replay ranks. Thanks again for watching the show. We have plenty more Super Replays lined up.